IHEEM WALES REGIONAL CONFERENCE 2023
Recently completed healthcare facilities in Wales: The Grange University Hospital in Llanfrechfa near Cwmbran, the Cardigan Health Centre, and the Llanederyn Health Centre in Maelfa, Cardiff. Stuart Douglas said on showing this slide: “Many of us would like a portfolio comprising such modern, efficient, and patient-facing stock, but it’s clearly not the case across our patch.”
noted, we’re holding onto a surface area of some 20 football pitches unutilised. We need that space to be freed up on our congested sites, and we need the savings from all underutilised accommodation to focus on the space in order to build or maintain in the future. We cannot have better without smaller”. Stuart Douglas wondered whether new investment proposals in the future should be linked to disposable disinvestment more explicitly, which in some cases might enable Health Boards to release space, because – as in England – closing some sites was ‘very difficult for people to see’.
‘Improving professional excellence and insight’ Mission Three was, he explained, ‘to improve professional excellence and insight’. With new hospital estate costing around £10,000 per square metre, it was imperative to ‘sweat the asset we hold’. The speaker said: “We need to plan the estate very carefully, and when we have it, must ensure that its use is managed optimally to ensure that it provides the value we’re looking for. We have the ability to plan our space, and need to plan what we need. We’re in a digital age, where we should see space not just as offices, but as our theatres and diagnostic and treatment spaces, which we need to be ‘sweating’ from morning through to very late.” With the three ‘missions’ in mind, Stuart Douglas said he would now like to suggest to delegates ‘the way you may wish to consider developing your estate strategies on three broad levels’. He explained: “Firstly, let’s think about organisational things you can do internally, collaboratively with your NHS partners, and then public sector-wide, with full multi-agency planning. So,” he said, “looking at the first – organisational, there are certainly good opportunities to re-think and rationalise what we do across our sites, and Nicola mentioned
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some of these areas – the new Grange University Hospital being an example.” He explained that the decontamination unit at the Grange had drawn together services supplying multiple sites, and was thus a rationalisation, while at Glangwili Hospital, a central decontamination hub serves the associated needs for all the hospitals operated the Hywel Dda University Health Board region.
Maintaining resilience when ‘rationalising’ Stuart Douglas said: “There are clear opportunities for rationalisation, but when we do rationalise, we need to make
Are we really able to understand how well our estate meets the service needs? Do we know how much underutilised space or ‘could be’ underutilised space we have? We really need to understand the configuration of such a vast estate
Stuart Douglas, NHS Wales
sure we maintain resilience. Then there is collaborative; as Nicola mentioned, there are opportunities and rewards for wider collaboration.” It had been great, he said, to see the recent news that Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, and Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, had joined together to plan a diagnostic and kidney centre in Llantrisant in a recently acquired former BA hangar, with Rhondda Cynon Taf Borough Council playing a major role in securing the site. The speaker said: “It’s good to see local authorities teaming up with the NHS to plan and deliver services in the right place.” “Thirdly,” Stuart Douglas said, “there is full public sector collaboration.” This area of wider collaboration perhaps offered the greatest opportunity, although sometimes it could be ‘a tall order’. In Wales, he noted, it was ‘already on the agenda’, with the Integration and Rebalancing Capital Fund which offers incentives and support for integrated planning across agencies, while in England, the NHSE/I is piloting Integrated Care Systems with NHS and
August 2023 Health Estate Journal 31
Courtesy of Cardiff and Vale University Health Board
Courtesy of Hywel Dda University Health Board
Courtesy of Aneurin Bevan University Health Board
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